


importance

by nigiyakapepper



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family, Gen, Origin Story, Season/Series 05 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 12:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13857933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigiyakapepper/pseuds/nigiyakapepper
Summary: “Mom left right?”“Kid, you already know this. She had to do something more important.”Keith goes quiet after that. He doesn’t know what more important could be, but he—their family—is less than whatever it is. The knowledge settles under his skin.- -Snapshots of Keith growing up.





	importance

He’s seventeen when he first joins one of the maintenance missions to Mars.

It’s a space launch, which is still exciting enough for the news to broadcast, but also routine enough for them not to think too hard about who they’re sending up there. It still has to be the best, of course, and he’s one of the most promising engineers the Galaxy Garrison has seen yet. They’re confident the crew will come back safe.

They don’t.

\- -

(Well, technically one of them does—fifteen years later—with a new name, somewhat the same face, various injuries. He doesn’t think to return to his family. He doesn’t know what’s happened to the others. But he is sure, if they have a choice, they probably won’t come back at all.)

\- -

“You’re a fool to hope all of us will live through this,” she tells him through grit teeth, her forehead shiny and beaded with sweat, one hand braced against her swollen belly, the other holding his in a vice-like grip.

“We’re fools every day, then.” He smiles and kisses her temple, securing her as best he can in a tiny, turbulent speeder hurtling toward the Earth’s atmosphere.

“What?”

“For hoping,” he says and taps the hilt of her blade strapped to her hip like a second skin. Then he takes the controls and does the impossible.

\- -

They come to live on Earth as they had in the stars—hectic, restless, constant research, and survival. A Blade’s work is never done, the cause never forgotten. They make a home in Colorado, amidst the trees and the jagged orange of the mountains. They spend their days building many things—a transmitter powerful enough to reach space, secure communication lines, a ship that will withstand a launch and then some, a hover bike, a house, a kitchen with plumbing, a family.

Their noise is radio chatter, the strike of luxite against steel in mock combat, the rustle of wind through the trees, the crackle of campfire, the aimless babble of a baby. Their fears range from getting caught by the biggest tyrant of the known universe, to being discovered squatting in a National Park by the local government, to bears, to their son toddling off a cliff.

In all of four years, only one message makes it to them: _Your quadrant caught their attention. Cannot disclose why. Be on alert for possible invasion. No details when or how._

Who knows how many light years it’s been travelling.

Under the light of the kindly moon, he watches her. She gazes at their son curled between them in peaceful sleep. Her expression is unreadable, but nothing is more telling than the way she strokes his cheek, and gently, gently touches his closed eyelids, the shell of his ears.

“The shape is different,” she says. “Curvy and small, like yours.”

His laugh is more air than sound. “He has your eyes. Your cheeks…and your chin.” He grins at that, remembering too many nights he stayed up late at their outpost, staring at encryptions until he went cross-eyed. She'd come up behind him, digging her chin into his shoulder before dragging him off to sleep.

The silence stretches between them, like the stars above them, or time and space pulled taut in a wormhole.

“You know you have to leave,” he says.

“I do.” Her tone is flat and cool.

“My mission ends here.” He looks down at their child and back up to her face. “Yours doesn’t. You could be the only one standing between them and this solar system. And us.”

She shoots him a glare, “I know.” Her son cuddles closer to her, mumbling sleepily, and her tone softens. “I know.”

\- -

The next morning, she leaves her blade in her son’s tiny hands.

“But…you won’t be able to go back!” he calls after her.

“I know!” she calls back, and flashes him a wicked grin at him, the one he fell in love with when he first met her, lost out in space. She zips up her flight suit and hops into the speeder. The earth quakes as the thrusters come to life.

“Wait!” he yells, clutching their son tight to shield him from the blast of a takeoff. “ _Wait!_ ”

It’s no use. He knows what she’s done. As he watches the speeder launch itself into the stratosphere, he knows he’ll never see her again.

\- -

They move to Arizona and get some papers forged.

\- -

They go on hikes during the weekends.

“How’s school been?”

“Dumb.”

“Hey now—”

“They make fun of me! They say I don’t got a mom,” Keith says, whacking the ground at every exclamation with a stick he’s picked up. “‘N that I live in a shack ‘n I only own one shirt ‘n I can’t get new shoes for Christmas. Then Jenny Garner looks at me like,”—he makes a face—“Then goes ‘you’ve only got one papa too!’ then makes a dumb Single Parents Only Club and she _followed me around._ For two days! _Why are you laughing?_ ”

He can’t help it. He’s got his hands on his knees and he’s out of breath from laughing too hard. His son has the most devasted look on his face. The boy slips into a southern drawl when he’s angry.

“’Cause it’s dumb,” he says, wiping his eyes.

Keith huffs. “Why do I gotta go to school anyway? Why can’t I just stay with you all the time?”

He smiles at him. They stop for a while and sit on the dry earth, drink water and breathe a little.

“Where d’you wanna go when you’re older?”

“I dunno. Away from here.” A pause. “I wanna go back home.”

A cabin in the woods. Mountains. Rustling trees. Radio chatter. The scent of ozone in her hair that he’s never smelled in anything else since.

“Mom left right?”

“Kid, you already know this. She had to do something more important.”

Keith goes quiet after that. He doesn’t know what more important could be, but he—their family—is less than whatever it is. The knowledge settles under his skin. 

\- -

His dad teaches him a lot of things—what kindling makes for good fire, how to skin and cook game, ten different ways to maximize a can of refried beans, how to hotwire cars, how to throw a punch, how to take care of a hover bike, how to darn his socks, how to tell with the night sky that it’s June, how to shoot a gun, how to wield a blade.

“Which are you feelin’ more?”

Keith is twelve. He looks down at the blunt wooden sword he holds. He made it himself with his knife several weeks back. The handle’s gotten smooth from the work of his hands, but his calloused palms bear the marks of too many splinters from his impatience.

“The sword,” he says, after giving it some careful thought. He knows a gun is more practical in some ways, but the sword feels right in his grip, an extension of his limb. He falls into stances as naturally as breathing.

His dad cracks a grin, eyes bright but somehow distant, as if remembering a joke only he understands. “That’s my boy!” He ruffles his hair and cackles when Keith yelps and swats at him.

\- -

They stumble on a worn down shack in the middle of the desert during one of their hikes. Keith exchanges a knowing look with his dad, and over the summer of that year, they refurbish the place—taking trips to and from the city with lumber and paint in a rattling rental truck. Keith’s dad takes longer hours at the garage where he works as a mechanic, as well as other odd repair jobs to scrape enough cash. He convinces his boss to let Keith help out and they soon earn enough money to get the shed fitted with electricity and running water.

Keith listens bemusedly to his dad debate whether or not to register themselves as homeowners. (They don’t.)

They cook their first meal there on Keith’s birthday, using a solar cooker they built out of cardboard and foil. They start spending more time there than their apartment downtown, and before the year is out, they’ve moved in fully, not without equal parts of grumbling, relief, and a suspect amount of poppy seed cakes from the ancient landlady, Mrs. Fala.

Around December, his dad starts building a radio.

\- -

“D’you want me to go to high school, dad?” Keith asks one afternoon, shrugging off his bag and collapsing on couch, careful not to displace his father’s mappings and papers.

“D’you want to?” his dad asks, looking up from writing. He looks odd with glasses. There are fine lines in the corners of his eyes.

Keith shrugs. It’s no secret what his dad’s been preoccupied with. For as long as Keith’s known him, his dad is a restless man, paying attention to life just enough to live it, seemingly wanting to get the small details over with to be able to focus on bigger things he’d much rather spend his time on, given a choice.

Keith remembers going to bed with stories of the stars, impossible explorations, and the memory of a lullaby he’s never heard anyone else sing. He’s also old enough to realize they probably weren’t true—just the passions of one so in love with what’s beyond.

It’s infectious, though, and he wants to make his father’s dream come true.

“I wanna fly…” he mumbles. And when he glances up at his dad, he’s staring at him with wide eyes. Hope, and sadness. It makes him look young.

There’s a beat of silence long enough to make Keith want to backtrack and say something more sensible, but his dad laughs—that free cackle of a laugh—and rises from their worn little coffee table to smack the wind from his lungs.

“Better brace yourself, kid, you’ve got serious work to do!”

\- -

He looks so much like her—the way his brows furrow when he’s frustrated, the way they ease when he isn’t, the profile of his face, the stubborn jut of his chin, the way he carries himself, the way he fights—it’s an echo of her. He looks up at the sky and wonders what she’s doing, how young she’s stayed.

They’ve been busy getting Keith into Galaxy Garrison. The boy has decent grades, an unremarkable discipline record (thankfully, Keith has tempers he never knows how to handle), not many friends, average recommendations from a couple of teachers.

Keith’s applying for the flight track. What kind of pilot that would make him will be decided after his second term. He needs to correspond with his sister-in-law about keeping Keith’s records and other important documents. He knows the Garrison provides for its students staying at the dorms, but he should do the whole shebang, right?—school supplies, new clothes, a new bag, those boots Keith’s been eyeing at the strip mall downtown (the only red pair left being a size too big, but he’ll grow into it). He needs to…he needs to…

He looks around their home—a shack, really, but it’s a place they’ve built with their own two hands. There isn’t a corner that doesn’t hold memories—of Keith doing his homework, himself tinkering with his latest junkyard find, of reading, talking, sketching strange things they find on hikes, developing photos the old-fashioned way, and sticking them up along with his star charts on the cork board.

He’s always planned to leave, to go back up there. He’s been working toward it for so long it’s all he knows what to do, even if his mind and heart aren’t sure if it’s the right thing anymore.

He’ll have to apologize.

\- -

“Dad? The school finally gave me my papers. It says Garrison folks are coming to pick me up tomorrow. Why did you list my guardian as Aunt Chloe?” He’s only ever seen her name in letters, his dad only ever talked about relatives and never visited or was visited by anybody. Keith didn’t think anything of it…

He trails off at the silence of his home.

Nothing looks out of the ordinary at first. Keith’s come home to find his dad out on occasion. The house has been straightened out, cleaned out of Keith’s belongings. His father’s notebooks are neatly arranged on the shelves next to the big radio. A few maps have been taken down from the cork board. A bag is gone, so are some clothes and stuff from the kitchen.

It’s emptier.

There’s a folded letter on the coffee table. He grabs it and reads it. He reads it again. Three more times until the words blur together and make no sense, the sharp lines of his father’s handwriting warping under tears he isn’t aware have fallen.

Keith’s breath is coming is ragged pants. He feels like his chest is caving in. Something in him is settling—no, dying.

_I’m sorry, son. The Garrison will take care of you.  
There’s something more important I have to do._

\- -

Idly, after Keith has moved into his dorm, angry, irritable, and lost, he wonders what the _heck_ is up with space that people keep chasing it. Well, he’s about to find out because he’s chasing it too, with the desperation of someone seeking _answers_.

\- -

He’s destined for fighter class even before the first semester is over. He works well enough with any flight team he’s placed in, but only just. No one sees him interact with anyone outside of class. Spotting him eating lunch in the mess hall is a rare phenomenon. He sneaks into the flight simulators and runs himself ragged doing sims.

Iverson bans him from them after he fails to show up for classes one afternoon, only to be discovered passed out from exhaustion in one of the simulators, ten ranks away from beating the top score—currently held aloft by one Shirogane Takashi, a 6th year and the best fighter pilot the Garrison has ever seen.

\- -

They meet at Iverson’s recommendation. It’s difficult at first. Keith doesn’t know how to slow down and won’t care if Shiro makes him, but the man matches his stride—or not even that, he grabs his hand and runs with him.

“Patience yield focus,” Shiro tells him, and something inside Keith settles.

They laugh over Shiro’s love of Garrison mac ‘n cheese, get yelled at for using the simulators past decent hours, exasperate each other with Shiro’s morbid sense of humor and Keith’s disregard for his own health. They stay up late on countless nights, just talking. Families are sensitive topics for both of them for different reasons, as they’ve come to understand. Shiro tells him of a lifelong dream of exploring the stars, reaching the vast unknowns of space, flying farther than anyone’s ever gone before. Keith brings him to the desert shack on hover bike and they camp out under the vast sky.

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Keith,” Shiro tells him on one of their afternoons together. “You're important too, you know.”

Keith doesn't know how to react. He doesn't even remember what prompted the remark. His heart beats a bit too big. "That...okay." One day he'll learn how to tell Shiro how much he means to him.

\- -

“Shiro, you’re an incredible pilot. You’ve been waiting for something like this all your life, you gotta go.”

“What about you?”

A huff. “What’re you worrying about me for? I’ll be right here when you get back. You’re gonna tell me all about it.”

“Alright,” Laughter. “Alright. Thank you, Keith.” A beat. “They told us they’re allowing family to see the launch site. You’ll come won’t you?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

\- -

Pilot error flashes on the TV screen and Keith dies a second time.

\- -

He relearns to live, but doesn’t feel quite living until the energy signals tell him of a spaceship crash-landing just shy of the Garrison facilities.

\- -

He’s alive, Shiro’s alive, they’re _alive_. And Blue launches them into a brand new quadrant of the universe.

\- -

“We’re far enough away. They’ve stopped firing at us.”

 _He’s so small,_ Krolia thinks, absurdly. The adrenaline of the fight still fizzles in her veins, laced with something else. She truly doesn’t know what to do with it, but she’s used to forcing herself to remain calm and quick under duress.

“I should give this back to you,” she says, holding out the Marmora blade. _And yet so big._

“How are you able to use it?”

The man she once loved is ridiculous. Keith has grown to look so much like him, more than her, she’s sure—from the eyebrows to the brightness of his eyes. She closes her own, and for a brief moment, she’s back—in Colorado, with the trees and orange mountains and radio chatter, strange Terran food, smoke and campfire, her mate’s barking laughter, the rumble of his voice, and the powerful grip of her son’s tiny hand around her finger.

“Because it used to be mine before I gave it to you father.”

Why is he here, in a Blade’s garb of all things? What happened after she left? Her son is _here_ , and despite everything, all the choices and circumstances have led to this moment. By the ancients, she’s not…all the nights her mind has stopped running long enough for her to think, her thoughts always go back to them…

Right now, nothing is more important than her son. She’s never going to leave him behind again.

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing several months ago, but season 5 finally gave me the leverage to finish it. i...don't know what this is. i initially wanted to write about keith growing up with his dad, as opposed to being tossed from foster to foster. now, it's all over the place but i needed to get it out of my system ^^; i'm sorry if the pronouns make it confusing, don't hesitate to inform me if it is!


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